September 11, 2010, According to local media, the north China's largest fixed line telecommunications company, China Unicom has just announced the winners of its new IPTV network tender that aimes to provide IPTV services in 10 cities. Huawei, ZTE, Erission, Alcatel-Lucent and other 3 local unkonw companies became the winners, but UTStarcom, Fiberhome, Hisense etc were ousted the tender.
In year 2008's telecom reshuffle, China Unicom accquired the fixed network resources of former China Netcom. As the pioneer of IPTV rolling out in China, China Netcom has begun to provide IPTV service in Haierbin, Beijing and several other nothern cities of China. Just in Haierbin, it has developed more than 100,000 subsribers. After China's government published its new triple play policy, as one of the service providers who are allowed to join all 12 cities trial, China Unicom began to reconsider its IPTV services. The tender began from this August, 11 suppliers attended this about 100 million Yuan tender.
Compared to China Telecom's 8 million subscribers, Unicom has only 700,000 IPTV subscribers. but they know how important it is to have their own IPTV platform. They have decided to begin the roll out in Beijing, Haerbin, Dalian, Qingdao, Tianjin, Shijiazhuang, WUhan, Hangzhou, Mianyang, and Changsha. Many of them are cities that China Telecom has less advantange than Unicom.
On the other side, China Telecom has begun to their IPTV roll out in Qingdao, Changsha, Mianyang, Wuhan and Yunnan province. In Yunnan, they have cooperated with local televison station and have developed 40,000 subscribers.